Through air drying has become the technology of preference for making tissue for many manufacturers who build new tissue machines as, on balance, through air drying ("TAD") offers many economic benefits as compared to the older technique of conventional wet-pressing ("CWP"). With through air drying, it is possible to produce a single ply tissue with good initial softness and bulk as it leaves the tissue machine.
In the older wet pressing method, to produce a premium quality tissue, it has normally been preferred to combine two plies by embossing them together. In this way, the rougher air-side surfaces of each ply may be joined to each other and thereby concealed within the sheet. However, producing two-ply products, even on state of the art CWP machines, lowers paper machine productivity by about 20% as compared to a one-ply product. In addition, there may be a substantial cost penalty involved in the production of two-ply products because the parent rolls of each ply are not always of the same length, and a break in either of the single plies forces the operation to be shut down until it can be remedied. Also, it is not normally economic to convert older CWP tissue machines to TAD. But even though through air drying has often been preferred for new machines, conventional wet pressing is not without its advantages as well. Water may normally be removed from a cellulosic web at lower energy cost by mechanical means such as by overall compaction than by drying using hot air.
What has been needed in the art is a method of making a premium quality single ply tissue using conventional wet pressing having a high bulk and excellent softness attributes. In this way advantages of each technology could be combined so older CWP machines can be used to produce high quality single ply tissue at a cost which is far lower than that associated with producing two-ply tissue.
Among the more significant barriers to production of a single ply CWP tissue have been the generally low softness and thickness and the extreme sidedness of single ply webs. A tissue product's softness can be increased by lowering its strength, as it is known that softness and strength are inversely related. However, a product having very low strength will present difficulties in manufacturing and will be rejected by consumers as it will not hold up in use. Use of premium, low coarseness fibers, such as eucalyptus, and stratification of the furnish so that the premium softness fibers are on the outer layers of the tissue is another way of addressing the low softness of CWP products; however this solution is expensive to apply, both in terms of equipment and ongoing fiber costs. In any case, neither of these schemes addresses the problem of low thickness. TAD processes employing fiber stratification can produce a nice, soft, bulky sheet having adequate strength and good similarity of the surface texture on the front of the sheet as compared to the back. Having the same texture on front and back is considered to be quite desirable in these products or, more precisely, having differing texture is generally considered quite undesirable. Because of the deficiencies mentioned above, many single-ply CWP products currently found in the marketplace are typically low end products. These products often are considered deficient in thickness, softness, and exhibit excessive two sidedness. Accordingly, these products have had rather low consumer acceptance and are typically used in "away from home" applications in which the person buying the tissue is not the user.
We have found that we can produce a soft, high basis weight, high strength CWP tissue with low sidedness by judicious combination of several techniques as described herein. Basically, these techniques fall into four categories: (i) providing a web having a basis weight of at least 15 pounds for each 3,000 square foot ream; (ii) adding to the web a controlled amount of a temporary wet strength agent and softener/debonder; (iii) low angle, high percent crepe, high adhesion creping giving the product low stiffness and a high stretch; and (iv) optionally embossing the tissue. By various combinations of these techniques as described, taught, and exemplified herein, it is possible to almost "dial in" the required degree of softness, strength, and sidedness depending upon the desired goals.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to a soft, strong in use, bulky single ply tissue paper having low sidedness and processes for the manufacture of such tissue.
2. Description of Background Art
Paper is generally manufactured by suspending cellulosic fiber of appropriate geometric dimensions in an aqueous medium and then removing most of the liquid. The paper derives some of its structural integrity from the mechanical arrangement of the cellulosic fibers in the web, but most by far of the paper's strength is derived from hydrogen bonding which links the cellulosic fibers to one another. With paper intended for use as bathroom tissue, the degree of strength imparted by this inter-fiber bonding, while necessary to the utility of the product, can result in a lack of perceived softness that is inimical to consumer acceptance. One common method of increasing the perceived softness of bathroom tissue is to crepe the paper. Creping is generally effected by fixing the cellulosic web to a Yankee drum thermal drying means with an adhesive/release agent combination and then scraping the web off the Yankee by means of a creping blade. Creping, by breaking a significant number of inter-fiber bonds adds to and increases the perceived softness of resulting bathroom tissue product.
Another method of increasing a web's softness is through the addition of chemical softening and debonding agents. Compounds such as quaternary amines that function as debonding agents are often incorporated into the paper web. These cationic quaternary amines can be added to the initial fibrous slurry from which the paper web is subsequently made. Alternatively, the chemical debonding agent may be sprayed onto the cellulosic web after it is formed but before it is dried.
As was mentioned above, one-ply bathroom tissue generally suffers from the problem of low thickness, lack of softness, and also "sidedness." Sidedness is introduced into the sheet during the manufacturing process. The side of the sheet that was adhered to the Yankee and creped off, i.e., the Yankee side, is generally softer than the "air" side of the sheet. This two-sidedness is seen both in sheets that have been pressed to remove water and in unpressed sheets that have been subjected to vacuum and hot air (through-drying) prior to being adhered to the crepe dryer. The sidedness is present even after treatment with a softener. A premium one-ply tissue should not only have a high overall softness level, but should also exhibit softness of each side approaching the softness of the other.
The most pertinent prior art patents will be discussed but, in our view, none of them can be fairly said to apply to a one-ply tissue of this invention which exhibits high thickness, soft, strong and low sidedness attributes. U.S. Pat. No. 4,447,294, issued to Osborn, III, relates to towels and facial tissue and discloses a process for making a towel or facial tissue product having high wet strength and low dry strength. This reference requires that the wet strength agent be at least partially cured and that a debonding agent be applied to the already-dried web, which further distinguishes that reference from the present invention. Phan et al., in U.S. Pat. No. 5,262,007 discloses towels, napkins, and tissue papers containing a biodegradable softening compound, a temporary wet strength resin, and a wetting agent. The Phan reference requires the use of a wetting agent, presumably to restore the absorbency lost by use of the softening agent. The present invention is unrelated to the Phan reference and does not require use of a wetting agent to achieve a one-ply bathroom tissue having high absorbency. In U.S. Pat. No. 5,164,045, Awofeso et al. disclose a soft, high bulk tissue. However, production of this product requires stratified foam forming and a furnish that contains a substantial amount of anfractuous and mechanical bulking fibers, none of which are necessary to the present invention. European Application 95302013.8 discloses a low sidedness product, but the tissue does not have the high thickness and temporary strength agent of the present invention. In addition, production of this product requires such strategies as fiber and/or chemical stratification that have been found unnecessary to produce the product of the present invention. Dunning et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,166,001, discloses a double creped three-layered product having a weak middle layer. The Dunning product does not suggest the novel one-ply premium softness soft tissue of this invention and does not contain a temporary wet strength agent The foregoing prior art references do not disclose or suggest a high-softness, strong one-ply tissue having low sidedness and having a total tensile strength of no more than 75 grams per three inches per pound per ream basis weight, a cross direction wet tensile strength of at least 2.7 grams per three inches per pound per ream of basis weight, a tensile stiffness of less than about 1.1 grams per inch per percent strain per pound per ream basis weight, a GM friction deviation of no more than 0.225 and a sidedness parameter less than 0.275 usually in the range of about 0.180 to about 0.250.